While the two suites (Op. 46 and Op. 55) from the incidental music to “Peer Gynt” by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) are ubiquitous, the original score is almost never heard in its entirety. Even the very famous movements like “In the Hall of the Mountain King” are rarely performed with the appropriate choral forces. This recording contains all the music Grieg ever included in performances of the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen‘s play “Peer Gynt” – that is, Grieg’s original score (Op. 23), along with a few additional numbers he included in later performances, such as the Norwegian Dances (Op. 35).

The play by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is in five acts and it concerns the life of the hunter and folk hero Peer Gynt. The work itself was intended as a melodramatic satire on the “Norwegian character,” and in it Ibsen attempted to break many conventional practices in theatre at the time.